1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to food processing apparatus and methods and particularly to an apparatus and method for making a plurality of selectively sized portions from a larger piece of meat.
2. Description of the Related Art
The food industry has for many years relied upon making several smaller pieces or portions from a larger piece of meat. Typically, this process was done by manual cutting of the larger portion into smaller pieces. This process was very labor intensive and lacked a level of consistency in the size, shape and weight of the smaller portions produced. In the food service or restaurant business, selective consistently sized portions have become very popular. This is particularly true as applied to poultry breast or beef products wherein smaller chunks or cube-like pieces are prepared from a larger cut of meat and a selective number of such pieces produced are sold in single servings. In view of this practice it is highly desirable to make each piece as consistent in size and weight as possible. This creates a better customer image and provides a higher degree of control of costs relative to the weight of product sold.
Many prior attempts have been made to create an automated machine to perform the cutting and sizing functions. Some of these attempt have met with some improvement over the manual cutting process. However, a simple to construct automated machine providing improved efficiency, consistency in results and relative ease to adapt to different portion sizes and to different shapes of the initial larger meat portions to be cut up has eluded those skilled in this art prior to the present invention.